Thursday, January 12, 2012

Q: What do you think of Frank Zappa’s famous phrase about musical journalism? “Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read”.

A: One of those sayings that seems very funny and has the ring of truth simply because of the rhythm of the sentence. Its "truth effect" is totally caused by the language and the structure and cadence of the sentence. When you inspect it more closely, it's complete rubbish.

Some of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th Century -- as prose stylists, as well as thinkers -- happened to write about pop music. Pop music was their prism for writing about society, culture, the human condition, you name it. As Greil Marcus said, with Lester Bangs you had to accept the idea that the greatest writer in America was someone who primarily wrote record reviews.

Equally, some of the sharpest thinkers and about music and culture happen to be musicians: incredibly eloquent, lucid and witty figures such as Brian Eno, Green Gartside, Morrissey, Robert Wyatt, Lydia Lunch, David Bowie, Malcolm McLaren, Momus... that is just scratching the surface. And right now we are enjoying a total boom of musician-conceptualists -- the guys in Vampire Weekend, Dan from Oneohtrix Point Never, Ariel Pink and James Ferraro, the guy in Dirty Projectors. There is a lot of music around at the moment that is "music of ideas" in the same way that people talk about "literature of ideas".

And finally, "for people who can't read".... well there are certainly people who've left comments in the comments section of pieces I've done for online newspapers who would appear to have difficulty reading! I think it is partly because people are reading too fast these days, they are skimming through text because there's so much to check out and they're always in a hurry. But you know, I think the existence of the music press -- particularly the UK music press in its heyday -- and the existence nowadays of this huge network of music blogs, it shows there is and has always been a lot of people who are attentive readers who really think hard about what they're reading. They get turned on like an electric switch being turned on. Their brains light up. That's what the blog boom is -- a whole movement of readers who became commentators themselves.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

[i would post "Kite Dance" off Jan Garbarek's Paths, Prints but it's not on YouTube]

suddenly remembered this bloke i used to know - unusual chap, a philosopher in the literal sense of the word, that was his job, he led a bookish existence of extremely regular habits, monkishly austere apart from this one luxury: ECM recordings ... he was nut for anything on ECM, had every single release by them... and he turned me onto a whole bunch of things on the label -- i was already interested on account of being obsessed with Paths, Prints, which I'd taped off Stubbs some years before... which then led me to pick up a few other things (Hassell's Power Spot, Characters, Sargasso Sea, Dis, some others -- you could get ECM cut-outs cheap then, they had been produced and distributed in too copious amounts following the success of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concerts which i've still never heard)... and i then had started reviewing a few ECM releases in MM on account of 1989 being something of an entropic year -- anyway this was what prompted this philosopher fellow to get in touch

now this is one of the things John B taped for me if i recall right

we parted company on bad terms, and explosively - but nuff respekk to Mr B, wherever you are

Monday, January 9, 2012

"My purpose was simple: to catch the feel, the pulse of rock, as I had livedthrough it. Nobody, to my knowledge, had ever written a serious book on thesubject, so I had no exemplars to inhibit me. Nor did I have any referencebooks or research to hand. I simply wrote off the top of my head, whateverand however the spirit moved me. Accuracy didn't seem of prime importance(and the book, as a result, is rife with factual errors). What I was after wasguts, and flash, and energy, and speed. Those were the things I'd treasured inthe rock I'd loved"